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Minimalism in art essay
Minimalism in art
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Minimalism
In order to understand minimal artists’ tendency to produce objects and not images, we need to define minimalism. Michael Delahunt at Artlex (1) refers to minimalism as “A twentieth century style of art stressing the idea of reducing a work of art to the minimum number of colors, values, shapes, lines and textures”. But I think this definition does not completely reflect what minimal artists did. They did not get interested in ‘complex’ things as colors, values, lines etc.
They preferred objects to images or I would rather say ‘brushstrokes’. Because that they
believed that “less is more”, even brushstrokes were too much for them.
Minimalists were against self expression. They wanted to use the meaning a ready made object already has in it. This was totally suitable for their purpose of using minimum effort and material for an artwork. Preparing an image would consume too much of the artists’ time and effort. And what’s more, it would have self expression in it.
They also believed that art could be concieved by mind before execution. That is, one must be able to explain an artwork to another who hasn’t seen it. For example Mohology-Nagy gave instructions by phone to a factory for one of his works(2). This can be thought as a instruction manual for an artwork (I think we can call minimalism as D.I.Y. art!). But you can’t do this kind of art with a painting. Can you think of it? “put some yellow there, mix red with brown and put it on the tree with ...
During the 1960’s, a new branch emerged from this style to further challenge the boundaries that artists constantly fought to expand. Minimalism sought to emphasize attention to the physical properties of space and materials as being the artwork itself, without any connotative meaning attached to it. One of Tuttle’s earliest works, Light Pink Octagon, exhibits characteristics from this movement and encourages the viewer to value this piece for what it is by itself and nothing else. With this artwork, Tuttle forced critics and viewers to eradicate the presupposed boundaries and humbly demanded an open mind for the acceptance of art in its simplest and purest
told a story through their artwork. All the different artists had different mediums and ways of expressing
...tal aspects to understand who the female subject is. Miller doesn’t used repetition; in fact, he doesn't use geometric or organic shapes at all. The lack of the use of shapes and repetition mimics the way a woman would put on makeup. Typically, makeup isn’t put on in perfect shapes, much less organically shaped patterns. The impressionist style reflects the message of this painting more accurately than a more classical style, like Cenni’s, could.
Wright's troubled past begins as a sharecropper while only a child. His childhood remained dark and abandoned. Richard Wright's father left him and his mother while he was only a child. The several episodes of dereliction resulted in the brief introduction of the orphanage. Subsequently his mother grew ill, and he lived with his grandmother whom treated him with brutality. Shortly after, he began a journey of rebirth and renewal, from the discriminant south to an opportunistic Chicago 1927. At this point in time, Wright began to develop his works through study and reading. His many jobs gave him the wealth and experience, along with many hardships and personal encounters to write about. Therefore, in his newfound love for literature and writing, he began to establish a firm foundation for himself by publishing an increasingly large amount of poetry and writing the early versions of Lawd Today and Tarbaby's Dawn. However, his name did not only attract those who wanted to appreciate a modern style of literature that would shake that grounds of racial distortion, but also attract the prying eyes of the public whom viewed his involvements in the Communist clubs, such as the Chicago John Reed...
Richard Wright was born September 4, 1908 on a plantation just outside Natchez, Mississippi. A grandson of slaves, he was raised solely by his mother after his father left the family when Wright was only five years old. His mother was religious and a schoolteacher, whereas his father was an illiterate sharecropper. The father abandoned the family to become a traveling worker. The family began to drift apart (Taylor). With never enough food in the house and his mother becoming ill in 1915, Wright was sent to a Methodist orphanage where he was beaten severely for various infractions. He later ran away from there and was sent to live with his grandmother. She was a Seventh-Day Adventist who later gave up trying to force Wright to go to church. Starting late because of the lack of nice clothes for him to wear, he was schooled in Jackson, Mississippi, but he never graduated from high school. He was a very strong reader and had a gift with words. His childhood in the rural South, after being abused mentally and physically by racis...
At this point the cubist artists stared to experiment with foreign objects, and made the background subjects of the work just as important or significant as the subject in the foreground. They started to incorporate the use of more expressive colors, and pictures became more embellishing than they were before. They also began to experiment with textured patterned surfaces like cutouts, wallpaper, newspaper, sheet music, etc. Today the use of various different materials all together in one work is called collage. The use of collage in their art allowed Picasso to extend the style of cubism to sculpture. Before that period in time sculptures were modeled or carved to be precise, this introduction gave artists permission to make a sculpture out of anything they desired.
In the Symposium, a most interesting view on love and soul mates are provided by one of the characters, Aristophanes. In the speech of Aristophanes, he says that there is basically a type of love that connects people. Aristophanes begins his description of love by telling the tale of how love began. He presents the tale of three sexes: male, female, and a combination of both. These three distinct sexes represented one’s soul. These souls split in half, creating a mirror image of each one of them. Aristophanes describes love as the search for the other half of your soul in this quote: “When a man’s natural form was split in two, each half went round looking for its other half. They put their arms around one another, and embraced each other, in their desire to grow together again. Aristophanes theme is the power of Eros and how not to abuse it.
This group ran their own exhibition, and over time, became some of the famous names we know today, such as: Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Alfred Sisley. However, it was not all fame and fortune from the beginning. Most patrons who came to the exhibition were so used to the classic, disciplined style that they often criticized the artists’ works, calling them “unfinished” and offended that they could showcase “sketches” as finished pieces. But this is exactly what these artists embraced; letting go of formality and embracing the “freedom of technique” (“Impressionism”,
The meaning of love is as intricate and unique as the purpose that it serves. It seems that the nature of love is found in the mind, the body and the soul. In Plato’s Symposium each member of the drinking party gives their own interpretation of love. As each speaker engages in their discourse, the concept of love is evaluated from different angles. According to Phaedrus, homoerotic love is the highest form of love and that sacrificing oneself for love will result in a multitude of rewards from the gods, while Pausanias believes that there are two forms of love: Commonly and Heavenly. As a physician, Eryximachus claims that love appears in every part of the universe, including plants and animals and that protection results from love. Before starting his speech, Aristophanes tells the group that his discussion about love may seem completely absurd, as he explains that in the beginning one body had two people who were eventually split in half by Zeus. This is meant to explain why people are constantly looking for their “other half”. Moreover Agathon, the poet the symposium is celebrating, critiques the previous speakers by stating that they failed to praise the god of love. He claims that love rejects feebleness and embraces youthfulness while also implying that love creates justice, courage and wisdom.
6. Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine that life is meaningless and that there is no deep order or purpose to the universe. What are the nihilistic elements of the film? Are there any contrary elements of the film that undermine a general nihilistic theme? What, if any, are the political implications of the film’s treatment of nihilism?
Richard Wright was a novelist who wrote about being black in American. He used his writings as a form of advertisement to civilize communism. Being that he was born into slavery he experienced oppression since birth. His first published novel was Uncle Tom’s Children and the book consisted of different short stories of racial oppression in the South such as lynching and the KKK. One of his most defining novels is Black Boy as he wrote about the cultural, political, racial, religion, and social issues of the late 19th century.
Modernism is defined in Merriam-Webster's Dictionary as "a self-conscious break with the past and a search for new forms of expression." While this explanation does relate what modernism means, the intricacies of the term go much deeper. Modernism began around 1890 and waned around 1922. Virginia Wolf once wrote, "In or about December, 1910, human character changed." (Hurt and Wilkie 1443). D.H. Lawrence wrote a similar statement about 1915: "It was 1915 the old world ended." (Hurt and Wilkie 1444). The importance of the exact dates of the Modernist period are not so relevant as the fact that new ideas were implemented in the era. Ideas that had never before been approached in the world of literature suddenly began emerging in the works of many great authors. Two of the pioneer Modernist writers were Joseph Conrad and T.S. Eliot. The tendencies to question the incontestable beliefs embedded in all thinking and to focus on the inner self dominated. Old viewpoints were tossed aside to make way for the discovery of modern man's personal spirituality. Two works that are considered important forbears in the Modern period are T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
They ridded the demands of the art community by not requiring great technical skill for something to be beautiful, and because of the lack of talent and thought that went into the art of their time period, there is only some pieces that I could consider true art. Traditions and encounters even stated that, ““Although the origin of the name Dada is unclear, it is believed to be a deliberately nonsensical word.” This quote shows that the artists didn’t want their work to fit into a previous category, and were often trying to prove that art can arise from anything. Dada pieces were unlike any art made, because they rejected using the precise technique and detail in their art, but what made this movement so unique was that it, “declared an all-out assault on the unquestioning conformity of culture and thought (T&E).” The idea of changing politics and long held views by art and not words was a drastic change for the art
One of the key ideas of the modern era was to forge the designs of the future on the corpses of the past, disregarding everything from the last era and moving forward with new ideals and styles. Refining and discarding they shaped, molded and constricted the ideas of design until reaching the pinnacle of minimalism. Creating design with pure aesthetics and reducing an object down to its core fundamental elements. Using the ideas of “less is more” or even “using less for more”, the designs ended up simple and elegant with a focus not in quantit...
The United States is a country full of people from different backgrounds and beliefs with dreams of endless possibilities. Every single person is uniquely different in every way. Millennials are the luckiest people of America. They learn from their parents mistakes and have more opportunities than them. They get to choose their own career, sexual orientation, religion, and basic beliefs. One of those choices is their living arrangement. Many millennials would rather purchase experiences than things. This way of life is called Minimalism. The minimalistic lifestyle ignores the societal pressure to purchase the latest fashion trends. Minimalists focus on their personal goals in life and are not attached to physical belongings. Hoarders,